Prime Pickings In The Pac-12

When you think of the West Coast, usually names like Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre come to mind, or names like Joe Montana or Jerry Rice. Oh, and Tom Brady is from the great state of California as well. But over the last few years, college football dominance has seemingly disappeared from the Pac-12 Conference. The Pac-12 hasn’t had a National Championship victory since 2004 (which USC was forced to vacate it), and three other title appearances which were all losses (two by Oregon, one by USC). The conference has been the one to see upset after upset, as well as a flurry of inter-divisional downfalls. So Jack, you aren’t a Pac-12 fan are you? Not a big one, if you couldn’t tell. But I get payed the big bucks here so without much more complaining, I give you my Pac-12 picks.

(Photo by David Madison/Getty Images)

The Pac-12 North winner, in my opinion, is going to be the Stanford Cardinals. When Stanford signed coach David Shaw, I knew the Cardinals would be getting into the winning swing of things. Shaw has brought a commitment to winning football games to Stanford. I like the Cardinals style of football, and it has seemingly brought them a lot of prestige over the last number of years. Replacing Kevin Hogan is going to be tough, but I think Keller Chryst can be the man to do so. Shaw can really find the skill in this kid, and I think we could see big things from him. Oh, they have a kid named Christian McCaffrey as well, he’s pretty good. Lots of experts have the Cardinal dropping a bit, but no chance they do in my eyes.

Coach Chris Petersen and the Washington Huskies are the team a lot of experts like to be Stanford’s biggest competition. You will get zero argument from me there, I like the Huskies this season. They should improve from that 7 win season they had last year. They had a stellar defense in 2015, which ranked among the best in the conference with points allowed. They also boast a dynamic QB-RB combo in Jake Browning and Myles Gaskin. The game to watch is when Stanford travels up to Seattle, that could easily be for the North’s crown.

So let’s travel down to the South. It’s a two team race in my opinion, and that race is between UCLA and USC. Are we surprised? Not really. But I swear they will both lose games they should win by 40, when it’s the Bruins and Trojans, it’s just how it works. But there is a guy down at Arizona named Anu Solomon and when healthy, he’s arguably a top 3 QB in the conference. I think the South is really a toss up to be honest, because you also have to factor in Arizona State, a tough team to beat at home.

Oregon is the last team I will look at real quick. The Ducks went 9-4 last season, which can be considered a down year for them since they are used to be competing as a top 5 squad. The Ducks will struggle with Stanford and Washington for sure, and they get a trip to Nebraska as well. Oregon could easily be a 4-5 loss team again this year.